March 27, 2009 2:00 am

Two Ways to Say the Same Thing

Here are two ways of saying the same thing. The first in 2007 and the second in a letter written 1802.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802), 3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)

The reason why we are in this mess is credit — too much of it, too cheap. That’s why housing, tuition, etc. went through the roof. Now our country is desperately dependent upon it and doing everything it can to prop up these phoney prices.

Withdrawal’s a bitch, ain’t it? Price things based on what people actually earn for themselves and it would all be reasonably affordable and “the economy” would still be humming along nicely. Stop meddling in the market Mr. and Mrs. Congressperson, Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Paulson. Let the free markets work; let them discover the correct prices of assets. Yes, it would be painful in the short term but we’d all be better off for it in the end.

As credit tightens and the credit pendulum swings the other way, those of you who bought with borrowed dollars thinking the sky’s the limit and those of you who are planning to do so now had better watch out.